Longboat sauna death an 'isolated incident,' police say

Longboat Key Police Chief Pete Cumming says the investigation into the unexplained death hasn’t slowed since it began.

By Bret Hauff
| 8:00 a.m. February 14, 2018

Longboat Key
News

Longboat residents have no reason to fear for their safety after the still-unexplained death of a 54-year-old woman at the Harbourside Moorings clubhouse Jan. 23, Longboat Police say.

Law enforcement have not noticed any “patterns forming” in their investigation since the woman’s death in a sauna, said Police Chief Pete Cumming.

Family have identified the victim as Lori Martin, a woman whose death District 12 Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Russell Vega said he was investigating.

Her body bore signs of trauma, and enough blood was found at the scene to warrant the department to dismantle the sauna in search of evidence, police said.

“We don’t see that this is something that is the beginning for some sort of trend,” Cumming said. “This appears to be an isolated situation.”

The death, which Longboat Police, with the help of the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office, are investigating as a homicide, could have been a suicide, Cumming said.

Cumming said the department likely won’t make a determination about the cause of death until it gets a report from the medical examiner.

‘She was my mother’

The Longboat Observer received an email a few days after breaking the news that Longboat Police had found a body in a sauna at the Harbourside Moorings Clubhouse.

“She was my mother,” a message from Stephen Martin read. “I have a ton of info and am not happy at the speed of the investigation.”

Martin said his stepmother, whom he identified as Lori Martin, and his father had a nearly perfect relationship — that the two of them seemed to try to outdo each other with romantic gestures.

She was a loving woman, Martin said. She had many friends all over the country from months of traveling with her husband on the about 6,000-mile Great Loop in their motor yacht, Phase II.

“She was my stepmother for 25 years, she’s been in my life since I was a child. She just was such a wonderful person,” Martin said.

Lori Martin showed no signs of depression, was never treated for a mental illness and “very lightly used alcohol,” Stephen Martin said.

She had been close with her family, who lived in the Sarasota area, Martin said. They, along with the rest of her family and friends, were devastated, Martin said.

“She was a wonderful, wonderful person,” Martin said. “Energetic, healthy, just very caring and very loving and so focused on other people. She just was constantly focused on other people and just making sure they were doing OK.”

Vega, the medical examiner, said he is waiting on results from DNA, toxicology and other types of evidence tests from labs around the state. This could take weeks or months, Vega said.

Longboat Police have sent all the evidence they gathered, including clothing and other “personal objects,” to private crime labs for testing to help expedite its investigation, Cumming said.

“We haven’t slowed down; we haven’t pulled resources,” Cumming said. “It’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, except this one is all white.”

The department has put together some of those proverbial pieces, Cumming said.

That includes a “short list” of people the department is making “relationships with as far as interviewing and interrogating,” Cumming said.

That includes the victim’s husband, Cumming said, identified in an obituary as Dave Martin.